Pages

Friday, February 16, 2018

Hello there! This is a quick lighting change that makes it easy to customize the lighting in a room. I'm sharing how I adapted a drum shade to create the look of a flush mount light in our bathroom too!

We have a recessed light above the tub in our bathroom, which is great. I always had plans to covert it using a light kit. Here's a night time view before I started:

First I used the converter kit -- it's a simple change! You screw it into the recessed light like a light bulb, and then there's a part that hangs down so you can hang a pendant fixture on it. (You buy those separately.) Here's a look at the converter kit I used:

I actually used this years and years ago over our kitchen sink. It works great and you can adjust the length of the cord easily.

I'm OBSESSED with some beautiful lamp shades at IKEA called Nymo -- every single time we go in I drool over them. They're the most beautiful colors and have such pretty detail. They have a really large size that I fell in love with for our master bathroom.

I ended up getting a large black one for that room, and hung it using the converter kit. It was plenty high, but I did some checking on electrical code and found out it was going to hang a little low for the measurements required above a tub.

We couldn't touch it (you want to make sure you can reach for it if you're falling) but I was still wanting it to be higher just in case. So I thunk and I thunk about how I could still use the fixture without that being an issue. And I came up with a plan!

I used (affiliate) my pipe cutters (I use them more than you'd think -- they're great for cutting down drapery rods!) to cut off the round part in the middle off of the shade frame:

Yes, that is a cat butt you see.

He's always with me:

I was able to remove the center part:

I had a plan to use cup hooks in the ceiling to hang the shade but couldn't get my ladder under the shade just right to reach. So I traced the shade on some paper, then marked where the cup hooks needed to be:

I used painters tape to tape it to the ceiling (centered on the recessed light) and then marked where my cup hooks needed to go. I took it down and added my hooks where I marked.

I was able to hang the shade directly from the ceiling so it looks like a flush mount:

This way I'm using the recessed light and just hanging the shade around it, so no worries at all! I cut the wire mount out of the middle because I didn't want it in the way of the light bulb.

I LOVE IT! Gah, aren't these shades so pretty?:

I ended up cutting the metal down a bit more because you could see them sticking out from underneath (although we're the only ones who will see that part):

It gives us the look of a flush mount light without it hanging down over the tub. It's SO pretty at night especially!:

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

I've had a lot of fun finding spots for our stuff in this house, especially art. Everything feels brand new in a different space! It's been fun to figure out what works where -- even though I've put way too many holes in the walls already.

I had a mirror up on the wall above the thermostat but it never looked right. I knew eventually I'd do something more there. So today I did just that, and in the process I remembered a trick I wanted to show you again!

I've blogged about this somewhere in the last few years, but it's a great tip worth mentioning again. Hanging art or frames with two hooks is the bane of my existence. When I turn something over and see two I feel like shaking my fists to the sky -- nooooo!

It's hard to tell here but the two hooks were different distances from the top. *shakes fists in air*

Soooo...here's how to deal with that. Just tie a string across the two:

If you're hanging more than one that needs to be at the same height, make sure your string is tied the same on each one. To make this easy I just tie it tight across the two, and then when you pull up the hooks will probably tilt in a bit like above.

You may still have to make teeny tiny adjustments if you want them all exactly even (they're never totally even in this house), but it works great! These frames used to lean along the back of our son's built ins in his old room for years:

I'm going to change the navy blue mats (which are just posterboard). I was going to change some of the photos too, but our son was SO tickled to see them down here I'm leaving them as is, at least for now. I'll eventually update with some more recent pics too.

It's a sweet little spot! And I was happy to use what we had. It also works with the thermostat but doesn't get in the way:

I was able to get them up really fast since I wasn't dealing with trying to make those uneven hooks work. 👍

Try the string trick if you've got annoying frames with two hooks. The only issue might be that they move around more than those secured by two nails. You can use the little rubber pads for cabinets on the back if that bothers you! (I don't mess with that often.)